To Reach Our Star
by parafilm
Summary: or How Did We End Up Here. Five times Riza Hawkeye didn't cry, and one time she did. Riza Hawkeye/Maria Ross, past Roy Mustang/Riza Hawkeye.


**A/N:**_ Five times Riza Hawkeye didn't cry, and one time she did._ Doesn't fit canon completely. I started writing this before I had really re-read all of the chapters about Hawkeye's past. Mainly, parts of 'Three' are somewhat inconsistent with canon. Enjoy! Concrit is always welcome.  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist, nor am I making profits from this fictional piece of work.

**Five.**

3, and the first thing she could remember was waking up one morning, legs tangled in her blankets. It was a sunny day, and young Riza Hawkeye was in good spirits. These were the last good days when her mother would hum gently with clarity in her eyes, she would later recall. She clung to her mother's legs while her hair was brushed, and they would have a picnic in the backyard or go to town for the day.

Shortly after, her mother became dull and unresponsive, and her father was always in his study (it was one of the rules that she not disturb him there). The house fell into a sorry state of disrepair, and the hired help only cleaned the main rooms and cooked.

When she turned four, a month after her mother turned into a shell, her father called her into his study. He spoke of _alchemy_ and _transmutation_, and though she could repeat the words, she couldn't grasp them. She couldn't draw the circles. She couldn't.

_That man_ looks at her, angry frustration in his gaze, and she knows that she has disappointed him. And when he dismisses her, she walks out of the room with her little four-year-old body ramrod straight and her head held proudly, refusing to cry.

**Four.**

She further recalls her childhood as this: she grew up in the countryside in a dilapidated mansion with a once-loving mother (she turned into a vegetable, said the nurse who comes by once a month when she thought Riza wasn't listening) and a scary father, who was always locked in his study. The servants essentially raised her, and there were so many rules and regulations: 'Miss Riza, you must be quiet indoors,' and 'Please take your shoes off and line them up by the door,' and 'Young mistress, please finish your studies before you play,' et cetera.

She had long since resigned herself to a life without love (the servants are paid to be there, and her mother only stares at the ceiling, unseeingly, on the few occasions Riza is allowed to see her, and her father is intense and scares her so much).

She is ten when a State Military lackey raps on the door three times, hard. That morning, the live-in nurse had taken her mother out for a walk in her wheelchair as she does every Monday and Friday.

"This is the Hawkeye residence." Not a question, a statement. Riza nods her pretty head silently, her expression having turned stoney. In her experience, nothing good came from the State Military. She saw her father even less, and even though he scared her, she felt childish devotion to him. "May I speak to your father?"

"He's not to be disturbed when he is in his study," she replies softly.

"The bodies of Claire Hawkeye and her accompanying servant were found an hour ago." Riza nods, distantly wondering who Claire could be. She realizes after a moment that it is probably the shell of a woman who occupies—occupied—her mother's room.

Later, she won't remember speaking, but she must have. "When can I bury her?" The man stares at her, pity in his dark eyes, and asks to speak to her father again.

She sits in her mother's dark room, her heart aching strangely. She doesn't cry that day either.

**Three.**

She's fifteen and in love, or at least that's what she tells herself. Her boyfriend—suitor—whatever he is—is gentle, intelligent, and sardonically kind most of the time, but sometimes he gets into his moods. He burns hot, then he burns cold, and she usually walks on eggshells around him. But she loves him because he wants the same things she does (power to protect Amestris—we've lost too much already, he mumbles as they get drunk on cheap beer), and he is mesmerizing and enigmatic.

He is her father's apprentice, the one who took her place in his heart. But she's not resentful of that—she was never talented in the ways of alchemy. And after he branded her with that tattoo, Riza doesn't even consider trying to learn that science again. She turns back to her practical studies instead, shelving her dream of uniting Amestris, and prepares to be a good wife. But somehow, that doesn't feel quite right.

She wakes up one morning and decides that she still wants to see their dream come to fruition (and in order for them to make this work, they can't be in love). Love is, she reasons, a liability. She puts away her books on keeping house and stops practicing her darning, stops making her spaghetti with meat sauce and her flan. Instead, she finds herself in the local library, reading through their meager repertoire of books about military science, strategy, and the art of war.

He doesn't expect it. And a month later, she doesn't cry when she breaks both of their hearts. Roy Mustang later will attribute, only after being plied with much alcohol and 'Under duress' (he will slur drunkenly), Riza's turning down his marriage proposal to the start his womanizing ways.

She distances herself from him for two years, a surprisingly simple task for two individuals living in the same empty house. Sometimes, she wonders if she finds alienating herself a little too easy. But she knows they both need to grow separately to succeed.

After her father dies, Roy takes care of her. Finds someone to buy the old mansion, helps her enlist in the State Military. She gives him her back, sort of like _quid pro quo_, she muses dryly (though she was never successful at the practical application of alchemy, she was familiar with the basic concepts). Then they part ways. State Alchemists are important. She is not.

She becomes the best sharpshooter in the military and saves his life (despite having finished only three-quarters of her training), and he saves hers by scarring her back. After the war, she becomes his right-hand-man.

Together, she decides, they will make it happen, though neither of them outright says it. (Occasionally, when he is drunk, he declares his undying love for her, and she whispers to herself as she staggers slightly under his dead weight, _what about our dream?_)

**Two.**

She meets the Elric brothers for the second time on a decidedly gloomy day. Ed is small and fiery, Alphonse is metal. He is very sweet, she decides absentmindedly as she files more paperwork for Roy to sign later. Roy explains that they are both geniuses at alchemy (she hears through his words—_together we can get what we want_).

Still, she feels some small part of herself go out to those brothers. She represses the urge to hug them and cook them spaghetti with meat sauce, draw them warm baths and soothe the worry away from their brows. They are too young to shoulder the burden, but she knows there is nothing she can do. And Riza Hawkeye knows that some people simply aren't cut out to be parents (her father; Van Hohenheim).

**One.**

Maria Ross is easy for Riza to love; she is like Roy but stable and less ambitious. In retrospect, she isn't really like Roy at all. She has a lovely freckle under her eye, is not prone to binge-drinking, likes dogs, and shares the same dream. She's punctual and responsible and not an embarrassment in public. Riza remembers meeting her long ago at the shooting range where they were both practicing—by chance—side by side. She remembers thinking, maybe this is my second chance, when she feels Ross's eyes on her, and she asks the younger girl to breakfast. (She also remembers that Maria stumbled on her words charmingly and said a lot without saying much before breathlessly accepting.)

That was then.

Here she is: 27, about to lose her lover, and Riza Hawkeye can't speak. She knows she will cry if she does. Maria stands in the doorway, her expression is vacant and tired, dark bags under her eyes.

Maria speaks, and all Riza hears is desperation and anger and sorrow. And she wants to go with her to Xing.

But she has to protect Roy so he can become Fuhrer, so they can finally fulfill their ambition (it is, after all, Maria's too). So she stands when Maria turns away, wraps her arms around the other, squeezes for all she's worth. She breathes in the scent of her soft hair and whispers, 'I'm sorry.'

Maria gently removes her arms. She smiles crookedly, and then she's gone.

Riza gives up her happiness for her dream again, and she hopes to god it's worth it.

**Zero.**

Riza Hawkeye hates the taste of alcohol, but after seeing so many people die, nothing else numbs her heart quite as effectively. It's the night after Ed visits to ask about Ishval, and remembering all of that blood on her hands still puts her in a bad place.

She knows that it is terrible form—completely unbefitting an officer, but she leaves for a nearby bar after the boy is gone. She's absolutely drunk, and midnight sees her leaning heavily on Roy for support. The world spins around her, and she just wants to scream and throw a fit.

"Imagine the rumors if the soldiers knew the ever-composed Lieutenant Hawkeye was in such a state," Mustang muses aloud. She swears at him in response.

He has a key to her Military-provided housing; since Maria left, more often than not, Roy sleeps over. They talk into the night and wonder how they ended up here, alone together. He sleeps on the couch and bitches in the morning about a crick in his neck and his sore shoulder.

His voice is calm, gentle, as he navigates her through the field of still-packed boxes. He takes her jacket and boots off, arranging them neatly, soothing her with his soft words.

"We're getting there, Riza," he murmurs as he tucks her into bed. He kisses her on the forehead and leaves the room. She drifts into a weary sleep.

She wakes up a few hours later, noting distractedly that it is very early morning and her head is pounding. She clenches her shaking hand into a fist and cries into her pillow, for her mother and father, for the Elric brothers, for Maria. For Roy. For Amestris.

She won't remember it in the morning, but she'll remember vomiting in the toilet and wondering when she got this co-dependent.

**Plus one**

Roy will later muse that she still is a surprisingly depressing drunk, and she will respond primly that if he'd been a little faster becoming Fuhrer, that wouldn't have happened, and, "Taisa, becoming Fuhrer won't excuse you from paperwork."


End file.
